Women can help their husbands be better fathers by believing in their parenting abilities, says Brigham Young University assistant professor Erin Holmes.

Holmes, who teaches in the school of family life at BYU, has compiled research that shows women who believe men can be good parents are likely to have husbands who are more involved with their children.

A portion of Holmes' research has been included in the Father's Day-appropriate book, "Why Fathers Count."

"The idea is that women who think that men like to be good parents — women who think men can learn good child-rearing skills — tend to have partners that are more willing to do those things," Holmes told the Deseret Morning News.

Holmes said women can tend to evaluate their lives based on their ability to take care of their children and single-handedly maintain their homes. The power women feel from succeeding in those areas is validating, but it can prevent men from being as involved in the child-raising process.

When men try to participate, sometimes women can be frustrated with their partner's lack of experience, and that is damaging to the family, Holmes said.

"I think sometimes our own standards get in the way," she said. "We might have really high standards for how clean we want our house to be or we might have really high standards for what we want our children to look like when we go out in public. Sometimes we don't explain those standards to men, and when they don't meet our standards, we decide they can't do something as well as we do."

Holmes said women are "socialized to be caregivers," and thus they can be exposed to experiences that are pertinent to parenting early in their lives. If women realize they received their skills from experiences and find ways to offer men the experiences they had, then maybe there would be a smaller gap between men's skills and women's skills as parents, Holmes said.

"I'm not blaming mothers when I say fathers aren't involved," Holmes said. "I know there are plenty of bad choices that men make in their lives, but when we work together and put aside our differences, we can genuinely appreciate the effort that's going on and really believe that men can be just as good at parenting. Then we can really make a difference for fathers and mothers and children."

More information on "Why Fathers Count" can be found at www.whyfatherscount.com.

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E-mail: achoate@desnews.com